Thermal Conductivity of Pure Type-II Superconductors in High Magnetic Fields

Abstract

The electronic contribution to the thermal conductivity in a pure type-II superconductor in the gapless region (i.e., in a field close to the upper critical field $H_{c2\mathrm{}}$) is obtained. Use is made of the fact that the order parameter is described by the Abrikosov solution of the Ginzburg-Landau equation and $\frac{l}{{\xi }_0}\gg 1$, where $l$ is the electronic mean free path and ${\xi }_0$ is the coherence distance. It is shown that the thermal conductivity drops rapidly in the superconducting region like ${(H_{c2\mathrm{}}-H)}^{\frac{1}{2}}$, and is strongly anisotropic.